ABSTRACT
W. V. Quine came upon the scene in the first instance as a mathematical logician; most of his published papers and books until the 1950s were on logic and set-theory. Quine attacked the notion of analyticity before directly attacking the notion of meaning; the original attack on analyticity was only an indirect attack on meaning. Quine has influenced the course of analytical philosophy deeply in various ways, but most conspicuously by setting some of its leading problems, and for articulating solutions to them for philosophers to celebrate or criticise. There are not many out-and-out followers of Quine; but figures who have been broadly supportive include Gilbert Harman, Daniel Dennett and Peter Hylton. In the 1960s Donald Davidson, partly inspired by Quine, developed a view which has in many ways gained a more visible following, even if it ultimately departs from Quine on the central question of whether a rigorous theory of meaning is possible.
